Sculptor molds Colombia's pain into art

Doris Salcedo's works about the drawn-out civil war in her country explore consequences of violence on those who survive

June 27, 2004|By Gary Marx, Tribune foreign correspondent.

BOGOTA, Colombia — There are no guns, no bullets, no blood and no corpses in Doris Salcedo's extraordinary artwork about Colombia's interminable civil war.

But her pieces speak volumes about the devastating impact of the nation's armed conflict and the universal impact of war on society.

For nearly two decades, the 45-year-old Colombian has followed her nation's battles, massacres, assassinations and displacements up close, peering into mass graves and speaking with survivors.

The results are surprising.

Rather than using the universal symbols of war, Salcedo fills her work with objects left behind by its victims--a bed, a front door, a lace apron, bits of bone, even strands of hair--to lure the viewer into confronting the pain and emptiness wrought by the conflict.

"I am not interested in the violent act per se. I am interested in the consequences of the violence," said Salcedo, a petite, intense woman with a shock of black hair. "We all know that if you cut someone with a knife, they are going to bleed. It's obvious.

"What is not obvious is the ways in which violence deforms the life of its victims. What happens to a child who has witnessed the assassination of his father? It twists his life, and what kind of impact will that have later?"

In one work, Salcedo impaled stacks of neatly folded shirts with steel rods to capture the horror of banana workers massacred by right-wing paramilitary forces. The shirts reach only partway up the rods, indicating there are more victims to come.

Salcedo spent a decade working on a series of sculptures in which she partially encased wooden chairs, a chest of drawers and other household furniture in concrete, leaving a shirt, a zipper or fragments of bone visible.

The artist explained that the wooden furniture speaks to the victims' humanity, and the concrete recalls their inhumane and violent death.

"Art can never stop the violence," she said. "What art can do is recover the pain of the person who has been assassinated, and by putting it in a work of art, the person rejoins the realm of the living."

While many Colombian artists have used war as the subject of their work, the theme has appeared more often in the last decade as the conflict between government forces and leftist and right-wing insurgents has intensified.

Negotiations near

About 3,500 Colombians, mostly civilians, have been killed annually in the 4-decade-old conflict. The war is entering a critical phase as President Alvaro Uribe is to open formal negotiations July 1 with the nation's powerful paramilitary alliance, the 13,000-member United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.

The talks, aimed at demobilizing the fighters and jailing those responsible for human-rights violations, are fraught with difficulty yet remain a cornerstone of Uribe's efforts to gain the upper hand in a war that also includes 20,000 leftist rebels.

In an interview last month, Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos warned that if the negotiations fail, the paramilitary groups--who have often fought alongside Colombian security forces--could turn their weapons on the government.

Sensing a pivotal moment, celebrated Colombian artist Fernando Botero last month donated 50 paintings and sketches depicting the war to the National Museum of Colombia. The images included vultures feeding on floating corpses and an assassin--his machete raised high--preparing to strike down a woman begging for her life.

The works were a sharp break in substance and tone from the portraits of corpulent aristocrats and others that have brought him fame and fortune. But Botero said he intends to have them serve as a historical record.

"In the future, the Colombian people will be able to remember the most tragic moment in our history," Botero said.

By contrast, Salcedo was dealing with war and violence even before she burst onto the international art scene in the early 1990s. Her work has been featured at many top museums and art exhibitions, including Documenta, the prestigious contemporary art show held every five years in Germany.

"She is a point of reference for all [Colombian] artists," said Jose Roca, a Colombian curator. "She has been able to communicate the local tragedy in a way that speaks to everybody."

Gloria Zea, director of Bogota's Museum of Modern Art, described Salcedo's works as "silent" yet filled with "enormous tension and power."

Low profile

Salcedo is not widely known in her country. She avoids publicity and wants her work to speak for itself.

But Salcedo also said she believes she was shunned by the local arts community for a decade because of her harsh criticism of Colombia's elite, which she blames for fostering the inequalities that have fed the armed conflict.

She also expresses little sympathy for leftist insurgents, who earlier this month massacred 34 farmers growing coca, the raw material for cocaine, in a battle over territory and drug profits with paramilitary groups.